BIVOUAC ON THE SANDS 433 



The summer season was now breaking up ; the river 

 was rising ; the sky was almost constantly clouded, and 

 we had frequent rains. The mosquitoes also, which we 

 had not felt whilst encamped on the sand-banks, now 

 became troublesome. We paddled up the north-westerly 

 channel, and arrived at a point near the upper end of 

 Catua at ten o'clock p.m. There was here a very broad 

 beach of untrodden white sand, which extended quite 

 into the forest, where it formed rounded hills and hollows 

 like sand dunes, covered with a peculiar vegetation : 

 harsh, reedy grasses, and low trees matted together with 

 lianas, and varied with dwarf spiny palms of the genus 

 Bactris. We encamped for the night on the sands, finding 

 the place luckily free from mosquitoes. The different 

 portions of the party made arched coverings with the 

 toldos or maranta-leaf awnings of their canoes to sleep 

 under, fixing the edges in the sand. No one, however, 

 seemed inclined to go to sleep, so after supper we all 

 sat or lay around the large fires and amused ourselves. 

 We had the fiddler with us, and in the intervals between 

 the wretched tunes which he played, the usual amuse- 

 ment of story-telling beguiled the time : tales of hair- 

 breadth escapes from jaguar, alligator, and so forth. 

 There were amongst us a father and son who had been 

 the actors, the previous year, in an alligator adventure 

 on the edge of the praia we had just left. The son, whilst 

 bathing, was seized by the thigh and carried under 

 water : a cry was raised, and the father, rushing down 

 the bank, plunged after the rapacious beast which was 

 diving away with his victim. It seems almost incredible 

 that a man could overtake and master the large cayman 

 in his own element ; but such was the case in this instance, 

 for the animal was reached and forced to release his 

 booty by the man's thrusting his thumb into his eye. 

 The lad showed us the marks of the alligator's teeth in 

 his thighs. We sat up until past midnight listening to 

 these stories and assisting the flow of talk by frequent 

 potations of burnt rum. A large shallow dish was filled 

 with the liquor and fired : when it had burnt for a few 

 minutes the flame was extinguished and each one helped 

 himself by dipping a tea-cup into the vessel. 



One by one the people dropped asleep, and then the 

 quiet murmur of talk of the few who remained awake was 

 interrupted by the roar of jaguars in the jungle about 



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